


Safe Harbor

by elle_stone



Series: October 2020 Fics [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autumn, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27310948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Former best friends Bellamy and Clarke have been awkward with each other for weeks, much to the confusion of the rest of their group. An autumn thunderstorm, a fallen tree branch, a fallen skeleton, a black cat, and some shared Halloween candy in a cozy nook of Clarke's bookstore, and they may finally find their way back to each other again.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Series: October 2020 Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088516
Comments: 20
Kudos: 109
Collections: bellarkescord halloween gift exchange





	Safe Harbor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VictoriaElizabxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriaElizabxx/gifts).



> This fic was written for constellationbellamy on tumblr as part of The Bellarkes Discord Halloween Exchange 2020.
> 
> Clarke and Miller's bookstore is based in part on The Book Barn in Niantic, CT. ARKadia Books is much smaller, but I was hoping to give it a Book Barn feel.

The wind is not playing around today.

From her seat behind the counter, Clarke can just make out the window, if she leans forward far enough. There at the end of a long aisle of books, it offers a glimpse of the lawn, the nautical-themed playground, and the old, gnarled oak, whose sturdy branches interest the children just as much as the wooden boat, its swings and slides, and Clarke’s colorful, frightful sea monster cutouts do. Today, those branches are swaying in a harsh bluster of wind, while swirls of leaves rise up from the grass and fling themselves against the windowpane. The sky is a nearly colorless gray, darkening with storm clouds that have only just begun to break. Stray droplets of rain hit the glass in distinct, slow beats. Another strong gust of wind and the branches rattle, the swings move as if controlled by ghost children. Clarke can't hear the way the chains creak but she can imagine the sound, another harbinger of the storm about to burst.

She leans back again, props her heels up on a nearby stepstool, and returns to her book. The coming deluge does not bother her. If a cold, dark autumn tempest is to bear down upon her, there is nowhere she'd rather be, not even her own home, than in ARKadia Books.

The bookstore sits just at the edge of Arkadia, on the main highway out of town: easily accessible, but bordered primarily by undeveloped meadow land, a few houses at wide intervals across the street. In the summer, the land blooms with tall grass and flowers, and they organize tea parties for the local kids out on the deck of the boat, and throw open all the windows of the store to let in the fresh air and warm breeze. Customers read outside on the wide front porch, and drink complimentary coffee and tea, and eat cookies from Murphy's bakery. But when the seasons change and autumn creeps in again, cool, with shorter days, the trees first turning ringing shades of red and orange and yellow and then scattering their leaves where the flowers once bloomed, the distance into town starts to seem longer. The narrow, three-story bookstore feels more isolated. The lawns outside appear more desolate as the bare tree branches rustle in strong winds. And the inside of the shop becomes even cozier, by comparison. ARKadia Books smells like wood and paper, and what it lacks in natural light, as crowded as it is with tall shelves overstuffed with books, it makes up for with a variety of lamps and strings of lights, and innumerable hidden nooks and corners with bean bags, rocking chairs, couches, and a mysterious and not-quite-known number of roaming cats. The counter is tucked all the way in the back of the store, halfway between the window and the staircase, with only the storeroom and employee space behind it. Clarke can hear the bell of the front door when it rings, announcing a new customer, but otherwise, she feels herself completely surrounded, safely hidden, in the warm and cozy center of the bookstore universe.

She's reading a mystery tonight, only a few chapters away from finding out whodunnit.

She flips the page to the end of the chapter, which ends on a tantalizing cliffhanger—then jumps at the abrupt sound of footsteps on the stairs off to her left.

A large cardboard box atop a pair of legs is stomping down to the first floor. "Have you checked the weather recently?" a voice asks, just as the box settles down on the floor, and the owner of the legs is revealed. Miller's expression is unusually serious today, as he raises his eyebrows with the question, but Clarke just shrugs.

"No," she answers. "Why? Is there news about this storm?"

"That it's going to be bad." He puts his hands on his hips, glances at the window to Clarke's right and then behind him, another set of windows barely visible beyond where the staircase curves. "Do you think we should have boarded the place up?"

"Is it supposed to be a hurricane or something? I hadn't heard anything about that." Clarke has known Miller since they were teenagers, right through his rebellious, shoplifting phase and all the way to now, his stable business-co-owner phase, and she's never seen him look so focused and concerned. Even the first years after they bought the bookstore, when they thought they'd never make it, and she spent long evenings worrying over their expenses and all the red on her carefully organized spreadsheets, he was optimistic and at ease, insisting that she not stress. Either he's grown up a little more since then, or the weather report is particularly worrisome.

She sets her book aside and sits up properly in her chair.

"No, but we're supposed to get record winds," Miller answers. "And a fuck ton of rain." He glances down at the floor. "Good thing we don't keep anything in the basement. But we could get branches coming down or coming through the windows. That would be a pain."

"There aren't many trees that close to us," Clarke pointed out. "Just the oak. Are you worried about the shop or about your house?" Miller and his husband have only recently bought a fixer-upper on the opposite side of town, with a notoriously leaky basement and two equally notoriously skittish dogs.

He shrugs. His eyes are still roaming among the stacks, across the Halloween decorations Clarke put up last week, focused on a bit of soft spiderweb fluff as if it were a real web spun across the shelves. "Maybe the house."

"Just go home early," Clarke says. "I can handle everything here. It's not like we have a lot of customers right now. Or—any customers.”

"Because everyone's scared of this storm, and only completely reckless people are willing to risk being caught outside in it," Miller finishes, his last words cut off by a loud buzz from Clarke's phone.

She startles. She'd forgotten she'd ever turned it to vibrate, and that, she tells herself, is why her heart is pounding a little too hard as she tilts up the screen and reads the text. "Speaking of completely reckless people," she mumbles, looks up with her own eyebrows raised and adds, "Murphy says he and Bellamy are on their way over." 

"Bellamy," Miller echoes, deadpan.

"Bellamy," Clarke confirms.

"You... okay with that?"

"Yeah." She shrugs. Then she picks her phone up properly and starts typing out a reply. "Why wouldn't I be?”

Miller, she knows, won't want to say it. The great, big, pink elephant in the room. The way she and Bellamy have been avoiding each other for three and a half weeks. Clarke knows everyone in their friend group has at least one theory as to what happened between them, and that no one will ever share those theories with her, because that would mean admitting they notice the new frostiness between the old best friends. A fight, perhaps? she imagines them asking. A hook up gone wrong? Were they secretly dating and this is the aftermath of a breakup?

She asks Murphy if they're stocking up on reading material for the oncoming storm.

When he answers, Clarke reads his reply out loud. "Bellamy says it's not even storming and no stupid wind is going to stop him from his research."

Miller laughs, once, and picks up the cardboard box again. "Must be very important research," he says.

"Isn't it always, with him? 

"Hey—” he leans over, bumps the back of his hand against her arm, “you don't have to captain the ship by yourself. I still have some more shifting to do upstairs anyway, now that the new books have come in."

She wants to tell him that he doesn't need to stay on her account, that she's fine, but that would mean acknowledging the elephant herself. She doesn't yet know what name to give it, even if she wanted to. So she just says, "Okay," and watches him disappear into the back. A few minutes later, she listens to him climbing the stairs again, two at a time, the fast, heavy steps of his boots and the occasional creak and strain of the wood.

She opens her book again but doesn't focus on the words. The wind rattles the windowpanes, makes the old, wooden building whine. Her gaze starts to wander again, taking in the seasonal look of the store.

Most of the truly spooky Halloween decorations are upstairs. On the main floor, which includes the children's collection, she stuck to more all ages fare: cute, smiling plush spiders and ghosts on the windowsills and the couches; new strings of orange and purple lights; an imitation pumpkin patch on the rug by the front door. On the display window, she's painted a troupe of dancing skeletons and a witch flying toward a full moon, along with the usual notices about new arrivals and store hours. But even the soft, warm orange-tint of the lights and the cozy warmth of the downstairs do little to ease her mind when the lights flicker above her head, and she hears the crunch of wheels on the gravel outside.

Clarke hears the door being pushed roughly open, scraping against the floor, and the jingling of the bell above, before she sees her newest customers walk in. Murphy is in the lead, an exaggerated smirk on his face that she knows is meant to put her at ease. "You realize you're the only business in Arkadia that hasn't closed early," he says, his voice too loud for the close and quiet of the room, before he's even halfway to the counter.

"That's just our devotion to our mission," Clarke answers levelly. "And you're probably the only customers still shopping in Arkadia."

"That's _our_ devotion to _our_ mission." Murphy pauses, then waves vaguely back at Bellamy. "Or his mission, anyway."

And here she had been trying not to look at him. But her gaze follows Murphy’s gesture anyway. Bellamy is a few steps behind him, his hands balled in fists in his pockets, steadfastly looking around at the shelves as if he hadn't already seen every inch of the shop. His hair is mussed from the wind, the slightest hint of color at the high points of his cheeks. He’s wearing a thick knit sweater beneath his jacket—Clarke's favorite of his sweaters, in fact—one that she knows from experience would fall down almost to her knees. They used to be the kind of friends who could share clothes: Clarke in his hoodies, Bellamy stealing her scarves and mittens and hats. The casual, easy intimacy between them.

Everything about him is awkward now, the squared set of his shoulders, the uncertain shifting of his gaze. She feels uncertain in her skin, too.

"And—what mission is that?" she asks, several beats too late, not quite enough confidence infused into her tone.

"I just need the local history books," Bellamy answers. His own voice is so low that a more aptly timed gust of wind would have drowned him out, and Clarke's heart clenches like a fist in her chest. She knows the situation between them is uneasy, even when they are apart—how they never text anymore, how she is always thinking of things to tell him, ordinary things and even those she cannot say—but the pain of separation is never worse than when he's near. At least she can look at him. He never seems able to look at her.

She clears her throat. "Well, you know where they are."

"Thanks.” 

He ducks his head as he turns, hesitates for a moment—she sees him biting his lip, as if about to say something more—then turns sharply on his heel and heads up the stairs.

The moment he's disappeared around the curve in the staircase, Murphy leans in over the countertop and asks, low, "So is this a fight situation or—?"

"Shut up, Murphy."

Easier if it were a fight. Easier if, like every real fight she's ever had, it were one she could control. She knows what it's like to hold forgiveness and apology both in her hands; both are heavy, but at least they are hers. This, instead, is a more amorphous regret, the kind of emotion that always slips through her fingers.

Murphy takes a single step back and holds his hands up, palms out. "Okay, okay. But just so you know, I have friends-with-benefits-relationship-turned-sour in the pool, so if you could just tell me if I'm warm—"

"Seriously, shut up."

She expects he'll quickly make himself scarce, afraid perhaps that she is near tears, though she's not. Instead, he walks around the counter and rests his hand on her shoulder, squeezes down with a bracing grip. "Come on. Is Bellamy Blake going to be the one problem Clarke Griffin can't solve?"

Clarke tenses, her shoulders stiff beneath his touch, her gaze turned away. She likes to tell herself she _tried_ : sent him a few cheery texts, to which he replied tersely or not at all, but still she let him get away with every glance he did not give her, every foot of space he put between them. The way he's closed himself off to her, a mirror of the way she's closed herself off to others, like this is some price she has to pay.

"Just buy some books, okay?" she says, then, with a decent attempt at a smile, a fond roll of the eyes. But her voice is soft. "It's a slow day."

"Will do, Ms. Griffin." Murphy nods once, as if in salute. He steps back a few paces, and then pretends to be immediately startled and engrossed by the nearby art history display. 

Clarke returns, with a sigh, to her mystery. Somewhere between the discovery of the latest body, and the gathering of the remaining suspects in the drawing room, she notices that Murphy has wandered out of her sight, and that the rain has picked up, an arrhythmic lashing of it against the windows as the raindrops are thrown about by the wind.

The lights flicker again.

Clarke looks up at them, uncertain. She toys with her phone, debating a glance at the weather forecast.

"Heads up!"

The sudden shout, from above her and to her left, snaps Clarke out of her reverie. Miller is bounding the stairs, so quickly that he would easily bowl over anyone in his way—if there had happened to be anyone in his way. He jumps the last two, and then skids to a halt at the counter, barely slowing down in time to avoid knocking right into the corner.

Clarke raises her eyebrows at him.

"Bryan called," he says, holding up his phone as evidence. "The power's officially out at our house and the dogs are going insane. I need to—"

"Go," Clarke finishes. "Go, go, go." She waves her hands at him, as if to hurry him out the door. "Like I told you, I'm fine here by myself."

"You should just close up early," Miller says. He heads into the storeroom, still talking, reappears a few moments later, pulling his arms through his jacket sleeves. "This storm's already bad and it's just going to get worse. I saw Murphy leave not too long ago and I wouldn't be surprised if Bellamy's left, too. There's no reason to keep the place open."

"True." She lets her book fall closed again, then tucks it back into her bag, which is stored safely beneath the counter at her feet. "Don't wait up for me, though. I know you have dogs to coax out from under the bed."

"One dog to coax out from under the bed," Miller corrects. "One that's probably running circles around the house, barking like a maniac." His phone pings with another message, and he glances down at it briefly. Clarke reads everything she needs to know about the message from the sour, worried expression on his face. Still, he takes a moment to look her in the eye and insist, "Call me if you need anything, though, all right?"

"Always. Now go!" She hops off her chair and shoos him toward the door. "Get out of here!"

Miller doesn't hesitate, but waves a last goodbye before he jogs away down the hall.

In the silence after the bell rings and the door slams shut, she takes a moment to gather herself. Suddenly, she is very alone, very small beneath the towering shelves, in a hollow of silence surrounded by the raging storm. 

The lights are still holding on, flickers aside, but the windows shake from the tremendous buffets of wind, and the rain has taken on a thunderous sound as it falls down in great sheets, swaying and fluttering like curtains in a rough breeze. She looks up at the tops of the windows, then at the ceiling, the dark shadows that gather between the beams.

She walks all the way to the front of the shop, and reaches the front window just in time to see Miller's car turn out of the lot and onto the road, its headlights weak and pale in the tumult of the storm.

So now she really is alone.

But before she can leave, for the comfort of her own home and her own bed, and the rest of her mystery by the glow of lantern light, there are tasks to be completed, a familiar checklist of things to be done. She counts the money in the register, takes her coat from the storeroom and then locks up the back, refills the water and food bowls for the cats. Then she takes a walk around the main floor, looking for any possible customers to send away, and checking the locks on the windows. The routine calms her, and by the time she heads upstairs, she's so focused that not even the continued, wary uncertainty of the lights bothers her.

The second floor is deserted, too, except for a small gray cat, who comes to Clarke meowing to be scratched behind the ears. "You're not scared of the storm, are you?" Clark murmurs, as she kneels down and lets Willow push her head against Clarke's palm. "No. Because it's not scary."

A flash of lighting spiking outside the window, followed too closely by a boom of thunder, makes her heartbeat skip. But she swallows it down. "Not even that," she adds. "Not scary at all."

The low shelves on the second floor are currently home to a collection of ceramic witches and strange felted elves, which Clarke rearranges carefully as she does her rounds. She also turns off the electric candles that are glowing in all of the windows, and briefly plays with the strands of fake leaves that are looped around the vintage boating magazine posters on the walls. Part of her wants simply to finish locking up and head home. Another part, utterly irrational, the ancient and animal part that fears darkness and bad weather and the threatening tumult of the wind, wants to avoid walking up the last set of stairs.

The top floor of the shop is the smallest, the darkest, and the spookiest. Because it houses, among other collections, the mystery and horror books, Clarke spared no expense with the frightful decorations, and knowing exactly what she'll see there does not in any way placate the illogical and fearful part of her. The stairs themselves are painted with ghostly white footprints. They creak as Clarke starts slowly up.

 _All I'm missing is a single flickering candle to light my way_ , she thinks, as the next step whines beneath her weight, and she pokes her head up at last into the low, narrow space at the top of the building. All remains quiet, the silence undisturbed, except for a strain of deep, discordant organ chords wafting out between the stacks, and the pounding of rain on the roof directly above, and the continued howling of the wind. Willow, bounding up the stairs next to her, startles her briefly as she rushes past Clarke's leg but—this clamminess in her hands is understandable, explainable. Normal.

She brushes past the bats hanging from the ceiling, walks right over the outline of a body painted on the floor. She tells herself to be reasonable. Yes, the flickering purple lights seem suddenly too eerie against the background of the storm, and the grotesque monster puppet on top of the horror display seems to be eyeing her. The fake cobwebs do not feel fake, any more than the drops of red paint dripping down the side of the mystery display do. They appear, in the low and unreliable light, very much like real blood sliding down toward the floor. But all of this she can ignore. She hid the CD player playing the low organ music in the far back corner herself. She finds it now and turns it off and listens to the fury of the rain.

What is most disturbing, up at the top floor, is not the decorations or the lights or the music, but the close and narrow feel of the shelves, the angles of them, every single dead end like the last corner of the world. Each new turn is disorienting, even to her, who knows the shop so well. Each step feels inevitably like a step into the unknown, and she cannot look ahead and behind herself all at once.

She reaches the last window, tests the lock, and sighs. Almost done. All of the windows safely closed and only the rest of the top floor circuit to complete, and she can head back downstairs and go home.

As she turns the corner around the second to last bookcase, the lights shiver and blink off again—another fork of lightning cracks outside the window, another loud rumble of thunder booms overhead—and she collides without warning into something solid and warm and alive.

Clarke shrieks, and whatever she ran into makes a low, startled cry, a strangled obscenity, and in the second flash of lighting that follows she makes out the breadth of his shoulders and the familiar outline of his face.

Her brain settles, calms—it's only Bellamy, only Bellamy, only Bellamy—but the shot of adrenaline to her heart is still racing through her blood. Every muscle in her body is tense and coiled, and she's breathing so hard she can barely manage the hot outtakes of her breath through her nose.

"Fuck," she hisses, every bit of her confusion and terror deeply embedded in the word, as she presses her hand against her heart. Above them, the lights flick on again unsteadily.

"Yeah, fuck," Bellamy echoes. He crouches to pick up the book he’d dropped, straightens up again but refuses to look at her. "What are you doing here?"

"What am _I_ doing? I'm the owner, and I'm closing up. What are _you_ doing?"

He's still breathing just as hard as she is, but somehow he manages a deep, affronted frown. "I'm a customer, and I'm browsing the books. That's allowed, isn't it? You're still open?"

He doesn't bother to look at his watch or his phone, and there aren't any clocks in the local history section: just an old armchair with shining wooden arms, upholstered in fading green; a scrap of carpet over the wooden floorboards, a single reading lamp, and, for the season, a skeleton, looming eerily behind Bellamy's shoulder. The presence of the skeleton would almost be funny, if Clarke weren't so annoyed.

"We're closing early," she answers. "Because of the storm. Murphy left; I figured you'd already left, too."

"The storm?" Bellamy scowls. He shoves the book back onto the shelf, a little too roughly for Clarke's taste, though she only crosses her arms and bites her tongue. "You're closing early because of a little bit of rain and some thunder?"

"Oh, please." She rolls her eyes. "As if you wouldn't be freaking out like a mother hen if you saw Octavia out in this. Or any of our friends."

 _Or me_ , she almost adds—but it isn't like that between them anymore.

"I'm—" He falters, knows she's right, but he's just as hopped up as she is, everything unsaid for three long weeks crowding the air between them. "I'm not a mother hen—"

She opens her mouth to retort, but another, wilder, thunderous gust of wind knocks the words from her. It shakes the windows with such force that Clarke is briefly, frighteningly sure they'll shatter beneath the strain. Instead, only the lights burn out.

Outside, something tremendous and heavy crashes to the ground.

And Clarke jumps.

She jumps forward and immediately into Bellamy's arms, and he takes a step backward from the unexpected jolt, and crashes into the skeleton behind them. It falls on them in a tumble of bones, something like a rib against Clarke's arm, a hard and inhuman hand sliding down her side, and she cries out again and briefly tries to flail and kick. Bellamy holds her tighter, presses her back against the bookcase so his body is shielding hers.

The skeleton falls fully to the ground with a distressing, hollow clatter, and then is still.

The lights do not come back on.

Bellamy does not move.

He is close against her in the dark and the raging of the rain, the ferocity of the wind; she can feel his body pressed against hers and his hard, uneven breath against her neck, his head bowed, his hands caging her in and the uneven pressure of the books against her back. Slowly, she wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him. With her cheek against his heart, the softness of his sweater and the solid, steadiness of his chest underneath, and her eyes closed, she feels safe.

After a long moment, Bellamy wraps his arms around her too. Clarke can feel the working of his lungs start to steady, the flurry of his heartbeat start to calm, as she calms.

When he finally steps back, extricating himself from her, he has to shove the broken skeleton back with his heel. The bones clack against each other, the only sound to disturb the white noise of the storm. Clarke finds herself glad for the utter darkness, that she can't see his face and he can't see hers.

Bellamy clears his throat, and she sticks her hands in her back pockets.

"Power's out," she says, and after a long moment—he was nodding, perhaps—he answers, "Yeah."

Clarke reaches for her phone, and turns on the flashlight, sweeping it across the room as if this would teach her anything new. The local history corner is the same, except for the pile of bones on the floor. The windows are the same. The lights are still off. Bellamy is standing awkwardly, his mouth a thin line, his gaze unsettled.

"So, we need a plan," she says, a great inhale on the first word, a slow exhale out. "There's a real flashlight in the storeroom downstairs. We can start by getting that."

"Good idea," Bellamy agrees. "Since we'll be stuck here for a while." He glances at her, and she raises her eyebrows, as if skeptical. "You were—right about closing early. It's not safe to be outside in this storm. We'll have to wait until it lets up."

Clarke nods. It's a fair point, though she hates to admit it. She can still feel the aftermath of his embrace, like a ghost touch across her skin. Hard enough to be near him now, to form plans, to form words, with this awkward stop in her throat. Now she'll be waiting out the storm, counting out the space between them the whole time, too painfully aware of how she can't stop looking over at him and how he seems intent on avoiding any glance at her.

"All right, well. We can start by heading downstairs, and then we can find a place to sit that's away from any windows until the worst of it passes."

She leads the way back to the staircase and then down to the ground floor, and Bellamy holds the light for her as she unlocks the storeroom again. She doesn't find the flashlight, but manages to unearth instead an electric lantern, as well as an old radio with batteries that still work, and several bags of Halloween candy she and Miller bought in preparation for Main Street trick-or-treating. She dumps the bags into a large plastic bowl in the shape of a pumpkin while Bellamy turns the lantern on.

"Are we really stealing candy from children right now?" he asks.

"Technically, the candy doesn't yet belong to the children," Clarke answers. "Anyway, there's still time to get more. I promise to replace everything we eat." She picks up the pumpkin with one hand and the radio with the other, and brushes past Bellamy on her way out of the room. She hears him making a vague, skeptical noise behind her, but he doesn't argue.

They settle on an overstuffed couch in a reading nook in the center of the main floor, a cozy artificial corner created by the artful arrangement of shelves. Bellamy sets the lantern down on the coffee table, and Clarke tunes the radio to one of the local stations, which is providing weather alerts in between the greatest hits from the 90s, 2000s, and today. She places it carefully next to the lantern, with the antenna all the way up to minimize static. Then she sits back against the cushions. Bellamy looks awkward, too formal and too stiff, on the other side of the couch, but if they're going to be stuck here for a while, Clarke herself insists on being relaxed. She kicks off her shoes and tucks her legs beneath her, then reaches for a mini Three Musketeers from the pumpkin bowl between them.

"So," she says. The sounds of the storm are muffled here, and the crinkle of the candy wrapper sounds too loud, even above the radio. She's resting against the cushion, turned to face him, while Bellamy stares steadfastly down at his own knees. "What was this mission Murphy was talking about? What were you researching?"

Bellamy shrugs. But she knows him, knows him better than he will ever admit to being known. If any question will get him to talk, it's this one.

"I've been brushing up on my local history," he says, slowly, after a long moment.

"For what? Kit-Kat?"

The second question seems to startle, then amuse, him, as he glances over and sees the candy that she's holding out to him. He reaches out for it, and their fingers briefly touch.

"Thanks. I agreed to be the guide for the ghost tours this year—"

"Kane finally roped you into it?"

He nods. "Yeah, Kane finally roped me into it. I already know a lot of the stories, but I wanted to do some extra reading anyway, make sure I don't get any dates wrong."

"Like you'd ever get any dates wrong," Clarke laughs, and Bellamy scowls at her, but she can tell by the softness around his eyes that he doesn't mean it.

"So are you going to tell the—" She jumps, the words cut off by the sudden appearance of a sleek black cat, jumping up onto the couch between them and neatly upending the candy bowl. "Midnight! What are you doing here?"

"Midnight already, huh?" Bellamy jokes. "How time flies."

"You have a really keen sense of humor, has anyone ever told you that?" Clarke asks, fond, as she picks up the cat with one hand and pulls the candy bowl out of the way. Safely deposited back on the cushion, Midnight immediately turns to Bellamy and climbs up onto his lap with a high-pitched meow. Bellamy seems briefly startled, but Clarke just smiles. "She likes you," she says, as she sweeps the scattered candy back into the bowl and sets it aside on the table.

"I guess so," Bellamy murmurs. He's already started petting the cat, and Midnight purrs beneath the slow, gentle touch.

Clarke inches closer, with the convenient excuse of scratching Midnight between the ears. Her knee bumps up against Bellamy's leg. "She's loving all the attention," she says, looking up at him, and the smile that he returns seems, for the first time in a long time, truly genuine.

Another round of thunder rumbles, more distant now, the persistence of the rain steadier, and calmer.

"As I was saying," Clarke smiles, stressing the last word with fake annoyance and a warning look down at the cat, "are you going to tell the story of the old Wallace house?"

"Of course!" Bellamy pretends to be affronted. "What would a ghost tour be without the story of the Wallace house?" He pauses, then adds, "I remember that one was always your favorite."

They've only been on the annual ghost tour together a half dozen times, their arms looped together, Clarke's hand squeezing Bellamy's hand each time they approached the old Wallace Manor on the outskirts of town.

"It is, so you can't screw it up," she says. "You should practice it now." She bumps her shoulder against his arm. "We have the time."

Bellamy sighs, a long and dramatic exhale of breath. "You are absolutely transparent, Clarke," he says.

"And yet I'm not wrong."

He hums, shrugs up one shoulder in a reluctant concession. He's staring down at Midnight, at his own hand and Clarke's, and how carefully they do not touch, and for a moment, as he flicks his eyes to Clarke and then away, she wonders if he's thinking about how transparent she is in other ways, too.

"Okay," he says. "I'm thinking of changing it up this year and starting with the first appearance of the ghost, in 1952, instead of the history of the Wallace family."

"See, I knew you knew the dates."

"Just listen, okay?"

Clarke nods once, and mimes zipping her lips shut. Then Bellamy begins. She knows the story as well as he does, but it feels different, sounds different, told in his gravely and measured voice. As she listens, she lets herself settle back against the cushions, the only tension in her that which comes from the tale itself.

First, the initial sighting of the ghost, eight years after the death of the Wallace son, by a teenage girl whose family had just moved into the previously abandoned manor. Then a still-shaky transition, Bellamy's words faltering slightly, as he pulls back to fill in the background of the property, and the eccentric family who lived there for nearly fifty years, before they descended into mania and madness. Clarke follows along silently, slowly feeling herself turn weightless as she loses herself in the tale. She settles against Bellamy's side, her head against his arm. He doesn't hesitate, but lets his arm curl gently around her shoulders, so she is close and safe, tucked in against his side.

Midnight continues to purr so loudly, and the storm to rage so steadily outside the bookstore walls, and the radio to drift with such uncertainty into and out of static, that Bellamy's low voice feels sometimes like a vibration within Clarke's own chest, rather than a sound she is hearing.

She knows the end of the tale is coming, but she still feels a sad emptiness when it is done.

In the long silence, in the near dark and listening now only to the rain and the whisper of static from the radio, she has to force herself to lift her heavy head and look at him. He's already staring at her, expectant.

"What do you think?" he asks, barely a whisper.

She smiles. "Pretty good. Could use some work at the beginning there. But good."

"Thanks." He pulls her closer for a brief moment, his hand squeezing down on her arm.

"You know, it's—" Clarke hesitates, tilts her gaze down again. She rearranges herself against him, watching her own fingers as she slides them along the soft fur on Midnight's side. "It's funny, how all of our friends think we're fighting right now."

The elephant in the room. She does not feel better for having approached it. Instead, her lungs hitch against some unknown barrier in her chest.

Bellamy does not answer for a long time, but nor does he pull away. His palm is rubbing absently up and down her arm. "Yeah," he says finally. "Murphy was being very weird about it in the car on the way over here."

"In their defense, we have been... pretty awkward."

"You can say it, Clarke." He sighs. "I have been. I've been awkward. Ever since what happened at Monty's harvest thing—"

Running into each other in the kitchen, while their friends gathered just outside in the back yard. She could hear vague sounds of laughter and conversation through the open window above the sink, the crisp air of early autumn blowing in on a light breeze. He'd accidentally trapped her there, reaching for a glass from the dish rack behind her. She'd curled her hands against the edge of the counter, looked up at him, standing so close that she could count every single one of the freckles across his nose and cheeks.

He hadn't kissed her then, but she'd felt him leaning in, his breath against her lips. She'd been only a moment away from pulling him down and grasping for him, because she'd realized in that handful of seconds how deeply she'd been longing for him.

Then a shout from outside startled them and he'd abruptly pulled away.

He'd buried his face in his hands then; she'd looked steadfastly up at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.

"Yeah. Ever since then."

She feels him growing tense next to her, putting space between them without moving. Hiding himself away from her again. She sits up, not thinking, and asks, "Do you regret it?"

Bellamy takes in a deep breath but doesn't exhale. His words are tense and taut. "I'd regret it if we ruined our friendship," he answers, which is so cliche and so inapt to all of the last miserable weeks they've spent apart that Clarke could almost laugh. Her mouth skews into a twisted, unamused frown instead.

"I think that's already happening," she says.

Bellamy grunts an awkward agreement, still doesn't look at her. His arm is still slung over the back of the couch, as if in open invitation for her. But the rest of him is closed off like a clenched fist, his knuckles at his lips, his thumb moving slowly across the curve of his jaw. Clarke knows she could handle anything else, anything at all, but how her best friend refuses to look at her.

She shuffles a few inches closer, her legs still curled beneath her, until her knee bumps up against his leg. Then she grabs his face, bookends it there between the palms of her hands, and forces him to turn towards her. She doesn't speak until his wary, uncertain gaze settles and locks finally on hers.

"Just tell me," she says, "if you don't have feelings for me, and I'll never speak of any of this again."

The corner of Bellamy's mouth curls up, a soft and self-deprecating smile. "Come on, Clarke. I think it's obvious I do."

"So—"

"I just needed _time_."

The last word, pleading, pops her in the center of her chest, like a pin through a balloon. "I—okay—I can give you time—" she starts, letting her hands start to drop down toward her lap.

Bellamy grabs one, at the last moment, presses it against his cheek again, presses a hard, sideways kiss to the edge of her palm. Her breath catches with the gesture—she knows his does too. That he hadn't intended it except in the moment he did it. His eyes close for a moment, and he doesn't let go.

"I do know you're right, you know," he says, at last, as he looks up at her again. "This is already an all or nothing thing.”

_All or nothing._

Clarke leans in a little closer. Bellamy's voice when he spoke was rough and low, of a part with the steady battering of the rain outside, the wild thunderstorm that has softened into a forceful and persistent, but simple, rain. The sound of his voice and the angles of his face against her hand and the new and unfamiliar texture of his skin beneath her fingertips, all send up a wild flare of longing in her.

"So, what are we—?" she whispers, just as low. She means _about to do_ , not _about to be_ , but Bellamy's so close now, leaning in too, that both questions are meaningless. She can feel the exhales of his breath, feel the low hum in his throat.

She closes the last gap between them. For just a moment, her mouth presses tentatively against his mouth, there and gone like a schoolyard kiss: a gesture, a question. She would almost put it into words. But Bellamy pulls her forward with an arm around her waist, a movement sudden and startling enough to unsettle the cat at last; she jumps down from Bellamy's lap in a fit, and Clarke laughs against his lips but doesn't break. Her palm is sliding up toward the back of his neck now, fingers stretching up to trace the soft skin behind his ear, tugging at his curls. His own hand a wide and steady touch at her back, guiding her. His kisses deep and slow.

Bellamy tugs her closer again, and in one graceless movement, still not wanting to pull away, Clarke climbs up onto his lap. Their angles are easier now. She wraps her arms around his neck and he settles his hands at her hips.

"I vote—" she manages, breathless, leaning back just enough to form the words, "I vote for all."

Bellamy grins. "Me too."

Here they are, Clarke thinks, in the center of their own world, surrounded by the quiet of the shop and lit by no more than the simple, weak glow of the lantern light, the bookshelves that tower above them keeping watch, and outside the hiss and thud of the downpour they cannot see. She breathes in the persistent scent of wood and paper, and Bellamy's aftershave. She lets herself trust the warm feeling that suffuses her.

When the lights flicker on, without warning, tentatively at first and then all at once to their full brightness, she's so shocked that for a moment, she forgets where they are. She half-untangles herself from Bellamy's embrace and looks up, awed. He laughs, and the sound is warm, too.

Clarke curls her fingers in the front of his sweater and tugs on it, to tell him it isn't funny, but still she's smiling. The shop doesn't feel quite the same, now, feels all of a sudden normal and everyday again. Like she's been lost in a dream and now she's awake, but somehow in the interim she's found herself in Bellamy's arms.

The only place she wants to be.

"I guess the worst of the storm's over," she says.

Bellamy's fingers are rubbing circles at her hips. "I guess so." He glances in the direction of the front door. "Sounds like the rain's letting up, even. You want to go outside and assess the damage?"

Clarke hums. She follows Bellamy's gaze, first toward the door, then around the walls, up to the ceiling. She thinks about the oak tree outside, the frightening thud she and Bellamy heard upstairs—one of its branches, most likely, falling to the ground. Only part of the fallout, she’s sure, as she pictures the rest: branches and twigs and leaves scattered across the yard and the playground, a mess of mud and wilting autumn grass, wide puddles in the parking lot. She sighs and turns to Bellamy again, her most serious expression on her face.

Then she claps her hands down on his shoulders and grins.

"I don't see any damage here," she says, wiggling her eyebrows. And Bellamy laughs, bright and honest and at ease, and tugs her down against him once more.

This is all she wants. Whatever is outside will simply have to wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can find a moodboard for this fic on my tumblr [@kinetic-elaboration](https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/633523220519288832/safe-harbor-bellamyclarke-7415-words-rated-g).
> 
> Happy Halloween!


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